Affective Publics: how discourse and affection impact online social networks conflicts

Abstract

This project aims to study the characteristics of politics conflicts on social networks platforms from Papacharissi's concept of Affective Publics (2015). Affective Publics are networked audiences that generate a communicational flow mobilized by the feeling, such feelings create a structure in the network that can only be materialized through affection because they are the ones that promote the intensity of the feelings, besides being able to transfigure the social networks dynamics. Such research is inserted in a period in which information and communication technologies remodeled the economic, political, social and cultural spheres. And with that the political-social conflicts also gain a new expanded and intensified dynamic, since its authors use a new communication medium that conveys a sense of total freedom expression, besides the absence of an evident mediator, influencing the development of political processes, such as election campaigns. The applied methodology is based on bibliographic reviews of the theme, collection and processing of data through the use of analyses methods of networks and application of content analysis methods, through processing natural language of selected conflicts on Twitter. The project aims to contribute to the theoretical and methodological framework by presenting a possible way of analyzing conflicts in online networks, expanding the debate about this theme.